Warming to Tariffs?: Cramer's 'Mad Money' Recap (Friday 9/21/18)

Have investors considered that maybe, just maybe, tariffs might be good for our economy? That was the question Jim Cramer pondered with his Mad Money viewers Friday. With the markets hitting new all-time highs, the answer just might be "yes," especially when we know even tariff haters have to admit that the stock market does not think earnings will be hurt, Cramer said.

So, he said, let's look at next week's game plan.

On Monday, Cramer said, he's very excited to be sitting down with JPMorgan Chase (JPM - Get Report) CEO, Jamie Dimon, to talk about tariffs, trade, banking and the U.S. economy. We'll also hear the results of the bidding war for Sky Communications and get earnings from Ascena Retail Group (ASNA - Get Report) , which has brought itself back from the dead.

Tuesday begins the annual Dreamforce conference at Salesforce.com (CRM - Get Report) in San Francisco, and Cramer will be there talking to the hottest companies in Silicon Valley.

Nike (NKE - Get Report) and uniform supplier Cintas (CTAS - Get Report) will be reporting on Tuesday, and Cramer expects great things from both companies.

On Wednesday we'll hear from the Federal Reserve and Cramer said investors need to parse the Fed's statement to gauge what might be coming next and what effect it will have on the banking sector. Then we'll hear from Carmax (KMX - Get Report) , which should report excellent earnings, and also Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY - Get Report) -- the only negative Cramer could find for the entire week.

Then on Thursday, it's Accenture's (ACN - Get Report) turn to report earnings, along with spicemaker McCormick (MKC - Get Report) and ConAgra Foods (CAG - Get Report) . Cramer would be a buyer of all of these names as well.

Finally, Friday closes out the week with Vail Resorts (MTN - Get Report) , a company that's a part of the experiential economy and should end the quarter on a high note.

Executive Decision: Red Hat

For his "Executive Decision" segment, Cramer checked in with Jim Whitehurst, CEO of Red Hat (RHT) , the cloud king that has seen its shares fall 24% from their June highs as the company missed on earnings two quarters in a row.

Whitehurst explained that the weakness in their Linux business was not unforeseen. He said that Red Hat has moved many of their Linux customers to three-year agreements, and they must now wait for those agreements to renew before they will see continued growth in the segment. Overall, he explained, the Linux market is growing nicely.

Whitehurst was more upbeat on the company's middlewear business, where many of Red Hat's newer cloud offerings are replacing legacy systems. When asked about some competitive losses in the quarter, Whitehurst said he's OK to lose a deal here and there, as many of those who leave to try something else often come back to Red Hat in the end.

Comeback Story: Signet Jewelers

Wall Street loves a great comeback story, Cramer told viewers, and it got one with Signet Jewelers (SIG - Get Report) , which fell from $150 a share in 2015 to lows of just $33 in April of this year, only to turn itself around and roar higher.

Cramer explained that Signet, purveyors of Kay Jewelers, Zales and Jared, among others, was hit with a wall of worries in 2015. First, the company's stores are largely mall-based. Second, Signet got too aggressive on financing, taking on a lot of bad debt. And third, the company was hit with sexual harassment allegations that led to the departure of its CEO.

But as new CEO Gina Drosos took the helm, she immediately went to work righting the ship. She began by drastically lowering Wall Street's expectations, then turned to changing the culture and fixing their business. She sold the non-performing loans and closed under-performing stores, using the proceeds to buy back the company's shares.

Signet also invested in its digital business, culminating in a blowout quarter three weeks ago that saw 53 cents a share in earnings and a 1.7% rise in same store sales. Signet also repurchased 14% of the company's outstanding shares.

Cramer said with results like these, Signet is clearly on the comeback trail and its shares are heading higher.

Off the Tape: Q6 Cyber

In his "Off The Tape" segment, Cramer sat down with Eli Dominitz, founder and CEO of the privately-held Q6 Cyber, a cybersecurity company taking a different approach to keeping data safe.

Dominitz said that while most cybersecurity is about building high fences and detecting and stopping attacks as they happen, Q6 proactively goes after the bad guys, finding out who they are, who they're targeting and what tools they are using. The company recently detected a new type of malware that was set to target a bank, and was able to alert them before the attack occurred.

Dominitz said that Q6 has even taken steps to alert non-clients to their findings, as nothing sells your services better than telling a company of a pending attack. Dominitz added that they've done this "quite a bit" as they're big believers in keeping both the public and private sectors safe from cyber criminals.